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Here's the Kiamie crypt on the summit
of Brooklyn's Battle Hill. The war monuments (to the Civil War and
the Revolution) are the towers on the left. Click here
to see a 360-degree Java panorama of the summit.
Azaelas were blooming just below the summit crypt. Below Minerva at the Altar to Liberty waves at the Statue of Liberty from the memorial to the Revolutionary War heroes of Battle Hill. 
Links of Interest
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Brooklyn's Highest Point 220 Feet Battle Hill has the best views of any of the five borough summits. You can see the World Trade Center and lower Manhattan and a few feet away on the war monument strewn false summit you can see the Statue of Liberty -- complete with a monument commemorating this view. It can be argued that the battle that took place on this hill actually saved in the United States in its infancy in August 1776. During the Battle of Brooklyn, British troops in flanking maneuver had routed George Washington's army and were closing in on capturing him. Washington fled with his army about a half mile west across the Gowanus Creek when a group of 400 Maryland soldiers stood their ground on the hill. All but 9 were to perish, being injured or captured. But the delay was enough for Washington to get his men across the creek and into Brooklyn Heights before evacuating to Manhattan under the cover of a night fog. Washington was eventually pushed to a fort on Manhattan's highest point before surrendering the island in September. He was return in triumph in 1783 after spending the night by the Bronx highest point. In the 1830's, an attempt was made to create a park/cemetery around the hill (in what was to become Green-Wood Cemetery). The plan with ponds and sculpted hills was so successful that it became the model for the design New York's Central Park. The cemetery (which still accepts burials) became the resting place for celebrities. Find-A-Grave's list of just the celebrities is 27 pages long! It's an urban legend that music conductor Leonard Bernstein is burried in a simple grave on the summit. He is burried near the summit but the actual summit is topped by a crypt housing Philip and Latifee Kiamie. I arrived at the cemetery by taking a 45-minute ride from Times Square on the "R" Train to the 25th Street stop on the near sealevel flatlands of the Sunset Neighborhood. It was just a block (uphill of course) on 25th Street to the ornate entrance to the cemetery. The cemetery is private land and its hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. are strictly enforced. It is surrounded by a barbed wire topped fence and security guards are everywhere -- although I everybody I spoke with was exceedingly friendly. If you want to hit another "high point" in route you can take the "F" train which crosses the Smith & 9th Street stop which had 89 feet above the street is the highest above ground point in New York City's subway system. You can switch to the "R." The cemetery has a maze of roads but once inside the gate you bear left on Battle Avenue to the obvious summit. The war monuments (a Civil War monument and the Liberty Monument) are on the false summit. The grounds are immaculately maintained and the blazing red azaelas made this a spectacular visit. Tours of the cemetery are regularly conducted and you can buy a $50 book detailing the cemetery's history. Several cemeteries are in this general area, my one disappointment was that it turned out actress Mae West is burried in Cypress Hills Cemetery. I had all these plans to explain what she really meant when she said, "Why don't you come up and see me some time?" Battle Hill like New York City's highest point on
Todt
Hill on Staten Island was created by the remnants of the last Ice Age
glacier (17,000 years ago) and is known as a terminal morraine.
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(Below is from an article by Michael Crewdson and
Margaret Mittelbach in the November 18, 1998, issue of The New York Times)
Brooklyn's Heights
Day 3. Fourth Ascent: 8:30 A.M.
Thomas Wolfe's story ''Only the Dead Know Brooklyn'' provides the leitmotif for our fourth campaign. It turns out the borough's highest point is in Green-Wood Cemetery, a 478-acre necropolis built atop a geologic formation appropriately called the terminal moraine.
Once again, we have asked Mr. Greenman to join us. At the cemetery's main gate he arrives with topographic map in hand and points at the graveyard's northeast corner, where a crest rises to an elevation of 220 feet above sea level.
We begin our ascent slowly so we can fully appreciate our beautiful yet eerie surroundings. Green-Wood, which opened in 1840, was originally intended to be a cemetery-cum-park, so great emphasis was given to landscaping and plantings. Spread throughout its hilly terrain are several picturesque ponds, which attract wildlife, and the trees, given room to spread, have developed massive green crowns. The gravestones are no less impressive. There are granite obelisks and turn-of-the-century mausoleums built into wooded hillsides.
As we wend our way to the plateau, Mr. Greenman explains that the terminal moraine marks the final resting spot of the last glacier to cover North America during the Ice Age, which left behind a huge load of boulders, rocks, gravel and sand that created the ridge running through the cemetery. So, really, a dying glacier gave Brooklyn its highest spot.
We scramble up the grassy slope of the cemetery's summit and at the pinnacle find a simple gray mausoleum where Philip and Latifee Kiamie rest. Through a break in the trees we can just see the top floors of the World Trade Center.
After checking that there are no higher peaks in our vicinity, Mr. Greenman announces that we have indeed summited. In respect to our surroundings, we resist the urge to exchange high fives.
